


Heart of a Soldier

by ninemoons42



Series: Floating Bridge of Dreams [2]
Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Artists, Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Bodyguard, Chinese Legends, Dreams, First Kiss, Hurt/Comfort, Japanese Mythology & Folklore, Knives, Legends, M/M, Morse Code, Past Lives, Protectiveness, Sparring
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-11
Updated: 2012-12-11
Packaged: 2017-11-20 21:43:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/589964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42





	Heart of a Soldier

title: Heart of a Soldier  
author: [](http://ninemoons42.dreamwidth.org/profile)[](http://ninemoons42.dreamwidth.org/)**ninemoons42**  
word count: approx. 4350  
fandom: X-Men: First Class [movieverse]  
characters: Charles Xavier, Erik Lehnsherr  
rating: R  
notes: A direct sequel to [A Black and Colored Mantle](http://archiveofourown.org/works/486087), so read that one first. The relationship between Charles and Erik might have persisted throughout several lives, might have endured their deaths, but this particular life is different and new and strange. And maybe, just maybe, this time they'll know what they're both doing.

  
_When he dreams, he dreams of burn and of breath. He dreams of a long way down. Weight, pulling, and reaching out to something. In vain._

Charles wakes up, and the first thing he does is take a deep breath. A loud sound in the silence of the cramped bedroom, too loud for the shadows that loom close, too loud for the cold.

He touches the corners of his eyes. His fingertips come away damp.

There is movement in the room, and Charles goes tense all over, before he carefully turns his head to look around.

It still takes him a moment to recognize the shadow settling at the foot of the bed: a long lean shadow, the shadow of someone he knows. Broad shoulders, black clothes.

"Erik," Charles says, and his voice is raw and raspy, as though he’s been screaming all night.

He might as well have been, he thinks, sourly, as he shies away from the memories of his dreams.

Erik is hunched over something, and Charles can hear the tell-tale scritch-scritch of a pen moving over a piece of paper.

_You’re not all right_

Charles closes his eyes, and takes a deep breath, and finally levers himself up to a sitting position. The movement makes him wince; something pulls in his shoulder, and he claps a hand over his mouth to cover his quiet groan.

One moment Erik is still at the foot of the bed, something that looks like concern smeared into the shadows hiding his face; in the next Erik is at Charles’s side, just sitting close, close enough to touch - but he does not close the gap between them, sliver-thin though it might be. He does not put an arm around Charles’s shoulders, and he does not offer his hand to Charles. Just his warmth, and an open invitation.

The decision to make contact is always Charles’s to make.

Charles hesitates, until the cold makes him shiver - and then he can half-fall into the steadiness of Erik, into his steadfast support. He puts an arm around Erik’s waist, and Erik responds by turning toward him, and Charles’s cheek ends up pressed against Erik’s collar bone.

"Do you remember our first meeting?" Charles asks, finally, when the sunlight finally penetrates the shadows surrounding the two of them. "Do you remember telling me about our lives, our dreams?"

Erik nods, and Charles can feel that movement against the top of his head.

"I think I might be having those dreams."

He can feel the surprise that shakes Erik’s shoulders, and it is as good a prompt as any, though he wants to hide from his questions, from the things that he keeps seeing in his dreams.

He can’t hide from his own mind, though, and he has to settle for something else: he seeks out Erik’s hand, and hangs on, and feels Erik hang on in return.

"I’ve been drowned, haven’t I," Charles says. He doesn’t wait for Erik to react. "I dream about it. Rope around my ankles. Was I just bound, or was the rope tied to a stone to pull me down? And if I was bound, why did they leave my hands free? I - in my dreams, I fall down, I’m pulled down, and I reach out for you.

"I fail, every time."

Hands on his shoulders, making him move, turning him around.

When he looks into Erik’s eyes, Erik looks frightened and resigned and incongruously gentle, all at once: it’s the way his eyebrows are pulled together, it’s the lines in the corners of his eyes, and Charles has never been looked at like this before.

He watches mutely as Erik holds up one finger to him, signaling _Wait_. Then Erik reaches for the pad and scribbles, _I can show you. But - are you sure that you want to know about it?_

Charles opens his mouth, thinks better of it, and closes it again. “I - will it help me to know? Will it make the dream go away?”

 _Perhaps not,_ Erik writes. _It’s up to you,_ and the words in that sentence run together, almost one single stroke, done in a hurry.

“Does it help you to know?” Charles asks after another long silence.

 _I just know that it happened. I try not to think about it too much,_ is Erik’s response. Crooked letters. _Can’t do anything about it._

Charles bites his lip. “I can - I can see why not. But.” He thinks about it and the more time he spends on the thought the stronger it seems to get, the more _right_ it seems to be. “But you don’t have to carry that burden alone, do you? Wouldn’t it be easier if someone else knew, and could help you deal with it?”

This time the expression on Erik’s face drops into deep worry. _And what will it do to you to know, when the dreams already distress you? When the speculation already hurts?_

Charles watches him put the pen down, watches him look at his hand - and then he takes it in both of his own.

“I must know it,” he says. “I have to know. Show me.”

Erik shakes his head.

Charles bites his lip, and nods, once. “Please.”

For a moment, Erik looks like he’ll refuse again - but then he slumps, a little, and Charles nearly pulls back when Erik scoots closer toward him, so that they’re facing each other on the covers, knee-to-knee.

The expression on Erik’s face is nearly indecipherable when he raises both hands and touches Charles’s temples with rough fingertips.

Charles takes a deep breath, closes his eyes, and -

_the man who protected him is near death already, broken and bleeding and bound, and he is pushed and prodded to the shore - he remembers to be quiet, because they made that pact, because they swore each other to silence, and he flinches when their captors roll a large stone in his direction - time sweeps past, he’s in the water, his eyes are open and looking up at the surface - sinking fast -_

Charles jolts away, pulls back with a shocked gasp, and finds himself flat on his back in the sheets. Again, he fights for his breath; again, he shivers with the dream-cold, with the dream-wet, phantom water tasting like copper and rust on his tongue.

He’s alive. He’s not drowning. He’s here, and breathing.

Erik, too, is alive and breathing. Erik is leaning over him, mingled concern and distress in his eyes.

Charles bolts up from the bed, dizzy with the speed of it, and clutches at Erik’s shoulders. “Why are you carrying these memories around? Why do you remember? Why must you remember?” He fights off the tears. “I know, I know, you said that every time we were separated we both died, and you have to remember so we don’t get separated again, but it doesn’t seem like you always succeed, like we always succeed, if this is just another life in which we have had to find each other - god, how can you bear it?”

Erik smiles, then. Sweet and strange and sliver-thin and utterly sincere. The smile takes Charles’s breath away, and so does Erik’s response: _It is difficult to die, even though I have died so many times, and even though I have watched you die so many times. But when I die I think that I will try my best to see you again, and then I can bear it. I can bear the memories and learn from them. I can do this over and over again if I can see you again and again. It is enough to keep you alive, to keep you near._

“I - ” Charles begins, and he knows without having to glance in the mirror on the wall that he looks about as thunderstruck as he feels. He stares at the page instead, at Erik’s heart in the ink and on the rough paper.

This time, the feeling of falling is one he cannot be afraid of.

This time, the feeling of falling is something that he thinks he could lose himself in - gratefully, willingly lost.

Soon enough the time comes for them to start running again, to leave this place, and he produces a box of matches from his own pockets. Carefully, meticulously, he sets each page on fire, letting the curled black ash burn down into broken fragments before moving on to the next, and to the next.

The words are lost, the ink burns away, and Charles clings to Erik’s hand, and runs at his side.

///

The first time that he takes up arms to defend Erik - instead of the other way around, the usual way around - he doesn’t even know where the knowledge comes from. He can only remember bits and pieces of the action: snatching the shotgun from one of the men that Erik had disabled; knowing how to load it and how to carry it correctly; yelling at Erik to get down. Sighting center mass on one of the last two assailants; the resistance on the trigger and the kick as he fired.

He remembers the second shot - the last shot - and he remembers Erik carefully taking the weapon away from him.

Afterwards, once they’ve found shelter for the night, he feels both the pride and trepidation of the kill.

It’s the latter that makes him turn to Erik and whisper, “I don’t know how I did that.”

 _I am familiar with the feeling,_ Erik writes in response. _But I’m glad you have that knowledge. You did what you had to do, what you had the right to do. You kept us both alive._

“I don’t like it,” Charles says. “I - I know they want to kill us, but I don’t think that gives us the right to kill them.”

_That is how you have always seen it. In this life, and in all the others._

Charles spends a sleepless night, thinking of blood on his hands.

The dreams of past deaths are overtaken by dreams of past lives.

Erik, or a shadow that looks like him, is always in those dreams, and the weapon in his hands shifts from sword to axe to hammer to rifle to bow to pistol.

Charles’s hands are empty, in these dreams, unless they’re red with his own blood and with Erik’s, when they fail and falter and fall.

In the morning, he sits on the floor next to Erik’s feet and says, “Teach me everything.”

He can easily read the question in Erik’s eyes: _Are you sure?_

“I still don’t like it.” Charles looks everywhere, looks around the room, looks at his own hands and his own feet, and finally settles on looking at Erik’s face once again. “But I have to do my part, don’t I? Who will protect you? There is no one but me. It means that I have to do something, it means that I have to know.”

Erik takes a fresh notebook from their supplies and doesn’t take his eyes off Charles as he writes. _This has never happened before. I have taught you to defend yourself, or you have learned how to fight on your own terms, but you have never wanted to learn all of it, all of what I know._

“Maybe that means something good,” Charles says.

The next thing he says is “I’m afraid, Erik.”

 _You should be,_ Erik writes, and there is a solemn look on his face. _As I am. I know change, I have lived through so much of it, but I have never had to deal with this kind of change before._

It is another instinct that makes Charles reach out and remove both notebook and pen from Erik’s hands - that makes Charles take both of Erik’s hands in his.

Such similarities between their hands, after all. Charles’s calluses, and the scars crisscrossing Erik’s palms.

This is different, Charles thinks. This is not like when he leans on Erik after a dream, and this is not like when he walks closely behind Erik, and this is not like when they are fighting for their lives.

This is just Charles and Erik, or whoever they really are after all the dreams have been revealed, after all the past lives have been scoured away.

Charles is not overly fond of the word “soul”, but it is something that he can use for now. It is a reference, a name, for that which is essentially him and what is essentially Erik, and for the tie that seems to have bound the two of them together.

Maybe this is something that has been waiting for them, too, all this time, like the battle and its aftermath, like Charles asking to be taught and Erik agreeing - maybe they have just been waiting for the right time to reach out to each other, to reach out in precisely the right way that will allow each of them to understand the other.

Charles’s hands tighten around Erik’s, and Erik squeezes back.

Slowly, eventually, the look of surprise on Erik’s face fades, and they stay like that for a long while.

///

Charles doesn’t quite get out of the way in time, but he does manage to brace his feet properly, so he takes the full impact of Erik’s fist to his stomach and remains on his feet.

He lets the momentum of the strike move him, and he drops his leading shoulder and lunges forward into Erik’s midsection.

He knows his mistake as soon as he makes it - he let both his feet come off the ground, even if for just a fraction of a second - and so he’s mostly expecting it when Erik twists and half-falls to the floor and then takes him out with a vicious sweep of the leg.

Charles doesn’t cry out when he falls, only tries to block and squirm out of the hold that Erik is trying to put him in - but because he’s inexperienced, because Erik’s lessons only began a few days ago, Charles is not at all up to the task and he’s overpowered in no time at all: flat on his front with both arms doubled up behind his back. Erik is pulling his left elbow up and to the right, and Charles winces and tries to get his right hand free, but not to try and break the hold.

He bangs out a signal on the floor and his fist cracks clearly and quietly in the signal that they have agreed upon. Two short strikes, one after the other in rapid succession; one relatively louder and held for a longer time.

It is not the best way to convey messages in Morse code, but Charles is still trying to memorize it and Erik is still trying to get accustomed to it, and they’re slowly getting better at it, together.

Charles heaves in a quick breath as soon as Erik’s weight is off him; he rolls gingerly onto his back and wills himself to settle back down from the adrenaline rush.

When Erik offers Charles his hand, and then a water bottle, and then a knife in quick succession, he gets up and grabs Erik’s forearm, and taps _What_ into the tanned skin.

Erik smiles, and taps his response into Charles’s palm. _Try._

“Okay,” Charles says, out loud, and he doesn’t know why it feels _wrong_ to speak, doesn’t know why he suddenly wishes for silence. There is no way for him to know what it is like for Erik, to be able to hear and not to speak; and there is no real reason why he should want to know about it. In fact, Erik has a reason for him to remain as he is, a man with a voice, because he is, for all intents and purposes, Erik’s voice.

Erik walks him through a pair of basic defensive forms, and Charles has to concentrate, because he’s trying to pay attention to everything: silverflash of light off the blades; the precise and efficient movements of Erik’s hands and feet as he demonstrates sweep and thrust and parry; the fierce cast of the lines around Erik’s mouth as he corrects Charles’s form with gestures and nods.

It takes Charles a few minutes to memorize the movements. It takes him the rest of the day to feel that he is moving naturally.

The memories are weights in his mind and on his muscles until he deliberately rejects them, until he thinks of the knife as just another brush, as just another thing he could hold in his hands.

It seems to do the trick, and when Erik steps back in so that they can spar, Charles finds that he is more than able to keep up, that he is able to listen to his instincts. Enough that he turns his back to one of Erik’s attacks and reverses his grip on his knife, and his counterattack comes within millimeters of slashing Erik’s throat wide open.

Erik steps away and drops his knife and raises his empty hands - and then he _laughs_.

Charles stares at him, dumbstruck, and hesitates before he smiles back.

Erik beckons him closer and kisses him firmly on his temple, taps out a message on his shoulder. _Well done._

“I can do better.”

 _Good for a first time,_ Erik taps. Slow but correct.

Charles thinks of enunciating, and smiles, and - greatly daring - returns the kiss, coming up onto the tips of his toes.

Erik’s skin is warm and damp with sweat; his smile lingers in the lines around his eyes and in the easy set of his shoulders as they call it a day.

///

When there are no attacks for three days it is Charles who suggests moving, and it is Erik who wants to stay. _I’d rather not invite trouble,_ he writes. There is a pause, and then he adds, _You are afraid._

Charles sighs heavily. “When am I not afraid? When I was a boy, I was afraid of my mother, of the man she married, of the son that she had with that man. When I was at school, I was afraid because I didn’t know why everyone else disliked me. When I turned sixteen I was afraid because I was all alone in the world. When I met you - when I met you I was afraid because I didn’t know what your stories meant. What your memories meant. What it meant that I shared many of those memories with you.”

_Do you know what it is that I fear?_

“I was under the impression you weren’t afraid of anything,” Charles says, and he falls back into the pillows, and closes his eyes.

Which is why he jolts and looks over, surprised, when the mattress dips under a new weight: when Erik joins him on the bed, sitting at the foot of it.

Erik taps out his response onto Charles’s lower leg, which is tangled in the thin blankets. _I fear one thing. I fear being alone._

“What?”

_I fear being torn away from you._

“Torn away,” Charles repeats, and his fingers tap out the letters, followed by three more: _Why?_

Erik offers him a one-shouldered shrug in response. _Forgotten._

Charles stares, trying to parse that one word: “Forgotten - you don’t care about the rest of the world knowing about you. You want the world to pass you by, but - ”

Erik bows his head. _All pass. Not you. You see me._

“I didn’t, for five years - ”

_Then you took me in._

“You don’t want to be forgotten by me,” Charles whispers when the realization hits him between the eyes.

It keeps him transfixed, pinned to the head of the bed, as Erik looks up and meets his eyes, and keeps looking at him.

Is this something that has happened before? Is this something entirely new? Familiarity is just as much a hammer-strike down every straining nerve as shock is, and Charles feels a little bit detached and at the same time completely grounded and completely himself in his own skin, when he reaches out for Erik’s hand.

Erik meets him halfway, and even though they’ve shared warmth over the past who knows however many nights of hiding and of recovering, even though they’ve stayed within arm’s length of each other through the days of fighting and running, the contact is electrifying - it saps the strength from Charles’s limbs, but leaves him breathless and aware of Erik’s presence.

A presence that doesn’t seem to be enough for Charles, now - not even the nights spent side-by-side and squeezed into single beds can compare. He shoves the blankets off and crawls toward Erik, into Erik’s space.

He’s still startled when Erik pulls him in, closer, closer. Erik has been so generous with him. They’ve had all this time of being next to each other, close enough to touch, and not once has Erik tried to pull away from him - Charles gasps when he’s made to climb practically into Erik’s lap. He needs no prompting to put his arms around Erik’s waist, and then he leans his cheek on Erik’s collar bone, surrendering, when there’s a light touch on the back of his head.

The fingers of that hand tap out a message, much more gently, on Charles’s shoulder: _Take what you need._

Charles shivers as he picks out the words. “And you, what do you need?”

This response is slow. Measured. _Let me stay by your side._

“You have that,” Charles says, and he pulls away from Erik, just a little, just far enough that he can see Erik’s face, that he can look once again into those gray eyes. “I - you have me. I’m here. And we’re changing things, aren’t we? Even though - even though I’m afraid and you’re afraid and we might not have any idea of what we’re doing. I - maybe we need to do this. I don’t know. I’m not sure I’m making sense.”

_You are saying what I feel._

Charles unwinds one arm from around Erik’s waist, and traces the planes of Erik’s face with the fingertips of that hand. “I still don’t know all of who you are,” he says quietly, “and every time I think we understand each other one of us does something else and we have to begin all over again. You’ve bled for me, and I’ve as good as gone to war for you.”

He takes a deep breath, and prays his words are enough. “Can you really still think that I’d forget you now? Can you really still believe that I’d leave you? There’s nowhere I can go, and nowhere I’d rather be. There’s just this.” He puts his hand over Erik’s heart. “There’s just here.”

Charles smiles, watching Erik’s eyes grow wider and wider - and then suddenly he’s being moved again, and Erik is curling around him, and Charles is more than happy to be wrapped up in him.

///

The first kiss, the first kiss with _intent_ , is as easy as a thought, as natural as a breath: Charles wakes up to Erik watching him, and he smiles sleepily and brushes his lips against the high, scarred arch of Erik’s cheekbone before he half-falls out of bed to wash his face.

The second kiss is exchanged over knives, over the first-aid kit, over dots and dashes translated into short and long taps: there’s a streak of blood high up on Charles’s arm, and there is remorse in Erik’s eyes despite Charles’s reassurances, and Erik turns Charles’s hand over and kisses the thin skin of his wrist, the blue veins running towards his fingers.

The third kiss is interrupted by another firefight: shouts and gunfire in the dead of night, and Charles reaches for Erik’s hand, and Erik keeps Charles close, and they run until they are exhausted - and keep running.

///

There is a note on the pillow when Charles wakes up, and there are only two words on it:

_I’m sorry._

Charles exhales, and forces himself to relax. Forces himself to ignore the lingering hurt in his skin, in his bones.

He wants to go back to sleep, but he doesn’t want to open his eyes and find himself facing the window, because even with the heavy curtains drawn he still knows exactly where he is, where they are, where they’ve run to.

Westchester County, New York.

Somewhere to the north is a house that wants no part of him, inhabited by people who have turned away from him. He could point to the house, perhaps. He could look in a specific direction and know that if he could see over great distances he would be looking at gardens and hills that he was still familiar with.

He is here, now, when he has spent the last five years and more running away from this place.

Charles closes his eyes and huddles in on himself, facing away from the window, hidden beneath pillows and blankets even when the room is warm enough to make him sweat.

He hopes that it is Erik who joins him under the covers because he does not want to open his eyes to check.

Tapping on his forearm: C. H. A. R. L. E. S.

Charles taps back, onto Erik’s shoulder: E. R. I. K.

 _Do you want to leave?_ is Erik’s next question.

“No,” Charles says. “Or at least I just want to stay here in this bed. With you. I don’t want to look outside. I don’t want to go outside unless we’re running for our lives.”

_We can hide._

“Yes, please.”

Charles is being pulled into Erik’s space, into Erik’s warmth, and this is both familiar and new.

He opens his eyes when Erik kisses him, firm fleeting press of lips to his forehead - and Charles leans into it and sighs, “Don’t leave me.”

 _Never letting you go,_ Erik taps. _Never again._


End file.
